The Good Terrorist

‘You want to sell?’ she inquired. ‘Pretty!’ as Alice unrolled the rug on the floor, breathing hard. Together they stood looking, captivated and quietened by the pool of soft patterned colour on the floor. The woman bent, picked it up, and held it against the light. Alice moved round to stand by her and saw the light pricking through, and in one place glaring. Alice’s throat was tight at the back. She thought wildly: I’ll take it to the squat, it’s so beautiful…but waited as the rug was thrown down on the floor again, just anyhow, in folds, and the woman said, ‘It’s badly worn. It would have to be mended. I couldn’t give you more than thirty.’

‘Thirty?’ moaned Alice. She didn’t know what she had expected. She knew it was, or had been, valuable. ‘Thirty,’ she stammered, thinking it had not been worth taking it.

‘My advice is, keep it and enjoy it,’ said the woman, going back to her desk, letting the dark glasses fall back into place, and drinking coffee.

‘No, I need the money,’ said Alice.

She took the three notes and, lingering to look at the rug lying there abandoned by her, went out of the shop.

She bought food for Jasper and went back to the squat. The street had a morning look, no one out, people had gone to work and to school; inside the women would be cleaning or with the kids. But she did not expect anyone to be up yet in her house; in squats no one got up early.

But Pat was in the sitting-room by herself, drinking coffee from the vacuum flask. She indicated with a gesture that Alice should help herself, but Alice was still full of her good breakfasts, and shook her head. She said, ‘I’ve got a bit of money, but not enough.’

Pat said nothing. In this strong morning light she looked older, all loosened and used, not cherry-bright. Her hair had not been brushed yet, and she smelled of sex and sweat. Alice thought, Today we’ll tackle the bathrooms. There were two.

Pat had still not said anything, but now she lit a cigarette, and smoked it as though she planned to drown in smoke.

Alice had seen that Pat was one of those who needed time to come to in the mornings, and was not going to say anything. She sat quietly and surveyed the state of the room: the curtains were rags, and could not be expected to stand up to dry-cleaning. Well, perhaps her mother…The carpet – it would do. A vacuum cleaner?

She knew Pat was looking at her but did not meet the look. She felt Pat was an ally, did not want to challenge this feeling.

Pat said, coughing a little from the smoke, ‘Twenty-four hours. You’ve been here twenty-four hours!’ And laughed. Not unfriendly. But reserving judgment. Fair enough, thought Alice. In politics one had to…

There was a sudden arrival of sound in the street, and the rubbish van stood outside. With an exclamation Alice ran out, and straight up to two men who were shouldering up rubbish bins from the next garden. ‘Please, please, please…’ They stood there, side by side, looking down at her, big men, strong for this job, confronted by this girl who was both stubbornly not to be moved, and frantic. She stammered, ‘What will you take to clear this garden…? Yes, I know…’ Their faces put on identical expressions of disgusted derision, as they looked from the sordid mess to her, back to the mess, at her, and then steadily at the mess, assessing it.

‘You should call in the Council,’ said one, at last.

‘You are the Council,’ said Alice. ‘No, please, please…look, we’ve come to an arrangement. An agreed arrangement. We will pay the expenses. You know, an agreed squat.’

‘Here, Alan,’ shouted one of them towards a great shaking throbbing lorry that stood there ready to chew up any amount of plastic cartons, tins, papers – the rubbish that crammed the garden of her house to the level of the windows.

Out of the lorry came another large man in blue dungarees and wearing thick leather gloves. Alan, arbiter of her fate, yet another one, like Philip, like Mary Williams.

She said, ‘What will you take to clear it?’ This was both calmly confident, as befitted her mother’s daughter, and desperate; and they stared, taking their time, at that plump childlike formless face, the round anxious blue eyes, the well-washed but tidy jeans, the thick jacket, and the nice little collared blouse, with flowers on it. And all, everything, impregnated with a greyish dust, which had been brushed and shaken and beaten off, but remained, obstinately, as a dimming of the colour.

They shrugged, as one. Three pairs of eyes conferred.

‘Twenty quid,’ said Alan, the driver.

‘Twenty pounds?’ wailed Alice. ‘Twenty!’

A pause. They looked, as one, uncomfortable. A pause. ‘You get that lot into plastic bags, love, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow. Fifteen.’

She smiled. Then laughed. Then sobbed. ‘Oh thanks, thanks,’ she snuffled.

‘Be around tomorrow, love,’ said Alan, all fatherly, and the three moved off as one to the opposite house and its rubbish bins.

Alice checked for the safety of her thirty pounds, in her pocket, and went back into the house. Pat was where she had been, in a smoke trance. Jim had come down and was eating the food she had brought for Jasper. She said, ‘If we get the stuff into bags, they’ll take it tomorrow.’

‘Money,’ said Pat.

‘Money money money money,’ said Jim, stuffing in bananas.

‘I’ve got the money. If I get the plastic bags…’ She stood before them, all appeal.

‘I’m on,’ said Jim.

‘Right,’ said Pat, ‘but what about the house next door? We can clear this place up as much as you like, but that place is worse than this.’ As Alice stared and stared, her pink mouth slack and doleful, ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t notice? The house next door?’

Alice flew out, and looked first into the garden where the woman neighbour had spoken to her. Suburban order. But there was a tall hedge at the other side of this house, and beyond it…She ran into the main road, and along it a short way, and saw, which she had not done before, because she had made her little excursions by another route, a house identical to the one she was reclaiming, with broken windows, slipped slates, a look of desertion, and a rubbish-filled garden. It stank.

She came thoughtfully and bitterly back to the sitting-room, and asked, ‘Is it empty?’

Pat said, ‘The police cleared it three months ago, but it is full again now.’

‘That’s not our problem,’ said Alice, suspecting it might turn out to be. ‘I’m going to get the plastic bags.’

Enough cost her ten pounds.

Pat looked at the great heap of shining black on the steps, and said, ‘A pretty penny,’ but did not offer. She said, ‘Are we going to do it with our hands?’

Alice, without a moment’s hesitation, ran into the next garden, rang the bell, conferred with Joan Robbins, and came back with a spade, a shovel, a fork.

‘How do you do it!’ said Pat with tired irony, but picked up the fork and a sack and began work.

They laboured. Much worse than it looked, for the lower layers were pressed down and rotting and loathsome. Black glistening sack after sack received its horrible load and was stood next to another, until the garden was crammed with black sacks, their mouths showing decomposing refuse. The thin cat watched from the hedge, its eyes on Alice. Unable to bear it, she soon went in, filled a saucer with milk, another with scraps of cheese, bread and cold chips, and brought them out to the cat, which crept on raggedy paws to the food and ate.

Pat stood resting, looking at Alice. Who was looking at the cat. Jim leaned on a shovel, and said, ‘I had a little cat. It got run over.’

Pat waited for more, but there was no more to come. She shrugged and said, ‘It’s a cat’s life.’ And went on working.

But Jim’s eyes had tears in them, and Alice said, ‘I’m sorry, Jim.’

‘I wouldn’t have another little cat,’ he said. ‘Not after that one,’ and went furiously back to work.

Soon both gardens, back and front, were cleared. Pallid grass was ready to take a new lease on life. A rose, long submerged, had thin whitish shoots.

‘It was a nice garden,’ said Jim, pleased.

‘I smell,’ said Alice bitterly. ‘What are we going to do? And I haven’t even thought about hot water yet. If Philip comes, tell him I won’t be a minute.’

She flew inside; and poured buckets of cold water into the bath; she did what she could, inadequately. Hot water, she was thinking, hot water, that’s next. Money.

Philip did not come.

Bert and Jasper descended together in responsible conversation about some political perspective. They told Alice and Pat they were going to get some breakfast; noticed the cleared garden and the ranks of sacks, said, ‘Nice work,’ and departed to Fred’s Caff.

Pat would have shared a laugh with Alice, but Alice was not going to meet her eyes. She would never betray Jasper, not to anyone!

But Pat persisted, ‘I left one squat because I did all the work. Not just men, either – six of us, three women, and I did it all.’

At this Alice faced Pat seriously, pausing in her labour of cleaning a window, and said, ‘It’s always like that. There’s always one or two who do the work.’ She waited for Pat to comment, disagree, take it up on principle.

‘You don’t mind,’ stated Pat.

She was looking neat and tight and right again, having washed and brushed up. Alice was thinking: Yes, all pretty and nice, her eyes done up, her lips red, and then he can just…She felt bitter.

She said, ‘That’s how it always is.’

‘What a revolutionary,’ said Pat, in her way that was friendly, but with a sting in it that referred, so it seemed, to some permanent and deeply internal judgment of hers, a way of looking at life that was ingrained.

‘But I am a revolutionary,’ said Alice, seriously.

Pat said nothing, but drew in smoke to the very pit of her poor lungs, and held her mouth in a red pout to let out a stream of grey that floated in tendrils to the grimy ceiling. Her eyes followed the spiralling smoke. She said at last, ‘Yes, I think you are. But the others aren’t so sure.’

‘You mean Roberta and Faye? Oh well, they are just – desperadoes!’ said Alice.

‘What?‘ and Pat laughed.

‘You know.’ Four-square in front of Pat, Alice challenged her to take a stand on what she, Alice, knew Pat to be, not a desperado, but a serious person, like herself, Alice. Pat did not flinch away from this confrontation. It was a moment, they knew, of importance.

A silence, and more smoke bathed lungs and was expelled, slowly, sybaritically, both women watching the luxuriant curls.

‘All the same,’ said Pat, ‘they are prepared for anything. They take it on – you know. The worst, if they have to.’

‘Well?’ said Alice, calm, and confident. ‘So would I. I’m ready too.’

‘Yes, I believe you are,’ said Pat.

Jim came in, ‘Philip’s here.’ Out flew Alice, and saw him in the light of day for the first time. A slight, rather stooping boy – only he was a man – with his hollowed, pale cheeks, his wide blue eyes full of light, his long elegant white hands, his sheaves of glistening pale hair. He had his tools with him.

She said, ‘The electricity?’ and walked before him to the ravaged kitchen, knowing that here was something else she must confront and solve. He followed, shut the door after him and said, ‘Alice, if I finish the work here, can I move in?’

She now knew she had expected this. Yes, every time that arrangement, he and his girlfriend, had come up, there had been something not said.

He said, ‘I’ve been wanting to be independent. On my own.’ Knowing she was thinking of the others, their plans, he said, ‘I’m CCU. I don’t see why there should be any problem?’

But not IRA, thought Alice, but knew she would deal with all that later. ‘If it’s up to me, yes,’ she said. Would that be enough? He had taken her as the boss here – as who would not?

He now turned his attention to the ripped wires that were tugged right out of the plaster; the stove, that had been pulled out to lie on its side on the floor.

Bitterness was on his face; the same incredulous rage she felt. They stood together, feeling they could destroy with their bare hands those men who had done this.

Men like the dustmen, thought Alice steadily, making herself think it. Nice men. They did it. But when we have abolished fascist imperialism, there won’t be people like that.

At this thought appeared a mental picture of her mother who, when Alice said things of this kind, sighed, laughed, looked exhausted. Only last week she had said, in her new mode, bitter and brief and flat, ‘Against stupidity the gods themselves.’

‘What’s that?’ Alice had asked.

‘Against – stupidity – the gods – themselves – contend – in vain,’ her mother had said, isolating the words, presenting them to Alice, not as if she had expected anything from Alice, but reminding herself of the uselessness of it all.

The bitterness Alice felt against the Council, the workmen, the Establishment, now encompassed her mother, and she was assaulted by a black rage that made her giddy, and clenched her hands. Coming to herself she saw Philip looking at her, curious. Because of this state of hers which he was judging as more violent than the vandalizing workmen deserved?

She said, ‘I could kill them.’ She heard her voice, deadly. She was surprised at it. She felt her hands hurting, and unclenched them.

‘I could too,’ said Philip, but differently. He had set down grimy bags of tools, and was standing quietly there, waiting. He was looking at her with his by now familiar and hearttouching obstinacy.

The murderess in Alice took herself off, and Alice said, giving him the promise he had to have before he did any more work, ‘It’s only fair, if you do the work.’

He nodded, believing her, and then transferred that obstinacy of his to the attention he gave the mangled wall. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said at last. ‘Looks as if they smashed the place up in a bit of a fit of temper, they didn’t do much of a job of it.’

‘What?’ she said, incredulous; for it seemed to her the kitchen or at least two walls of it, were sprouting and dangling cables and wires; and the creamy plaster lay like dough in mounds along the bottom of these walls, which were discoloured and scurfy.

‘Seen worse.’ Then, ‘I’ve got to have the floorboards up, can’t work with that down there.’

The fallen plaster had gone hard, and Alice had to smash it free. The kitchen was full of fine white dust. She worked at floor level, while Philip stood above her on the big table he had dragged to the wall. Then, the plaster and rubbish were in sacks, and she swept up with the handbrush and pan, which were all she had. She was irritable and weepy, for she knew that every inch of the ceiling, the walls, should be washed down, should be painted. And then the house, the whole house was like that, and the roof – what would they find when at last they got that horrible upper floor free of its smelly pails? Who was going to replace slates, how to pay for it all? She was brushing and brushing, and each sweep scuffed up more filth into the air, and she was thinking, I’ve got to get to the Electricity Board, how can I, looking like this.

She stood up, a wraith in the white-dust-filled air, and said, ‘Your friend, is she at home, would she give me a bath?’

Philip did not reply, he was examining a cable with a strong torch.

She said, furious, ‘There were public baths till last year, nice ones, not far, they were in Auction Street. Friends of mine used them – they are in a squat in Belsize Road. Then the Council closed them. They closed them.’ She felt tears hot on her chalky cheeks, and stood, spent, looking imploringly at Philip’s slight, almost girlish back.

He said, ‘We had a rare old row, when I left.’

She thought, She threw him out.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll manage. I’ll get cleaned up and I’m going to the Electricity Board. So be careful, in case they switch it on.’

‘You think you can get them to do that?’

‘I’ve managed it before, haven’t I?’ At the thought of this and other victories, her depression lifted and she was popping with energy again.

In the hall, the two desperadoes were just about to go out into the world of the streets, gardens, neighbours, cats, cars and sparrows.

They looked just like everybody, thought Alice, seeing them turn round, the pretty fair Faye, delicate inside the almost tangible protective ambience of swarthy Roberta, as strong as a tank – as strong as I am, thought Alice, standing there, looking, she knew, like a clown who has just been showered with flour.

‘Well,’ said Faye, humorous, and Roberta commented, ‘Well,’ and the two women laughed, and went out of the door as though all this hard work had nothing to do with them.

‘No good expecting anything,’ said Alice to herself, stoically, after so much experience of those who did and those who wouldn’t. Again she went up to the bathroom and stood naked in desolation, while the bath filled with cold water to the level of the grime mark that showed where she had done all this earlier that day. And again she stood in cold water endeavouring to rid herself of the dirt, her mother’s daughter, thinking viciously of the four years she had lived inside her mother’s house, where hot water came obediently at a touch. They don’t know what it costs, she was muttering, furiously. It all comes from the workers, from us…

She did her best; she put on a nice neat skirt, which she had purloined from her mother, with a joke that it suited her better: she needed a skirt sometimes for respectability, some types of people were reassured by it. She put on another of the little neat-collared shirts, in blue cotton this time, that made her feel herself. She did her best with her hair, which felt greasy and gritty, although she had stood with it held down in a bucket of the unyielding cold water. Then she went into the sitting-room. Pat, relaxed in a big armchair, was asleep. Alice went quietly up and stared down at this unknown woman, who was her ally. She was thinking: She won’t leave yet. She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t think much of Bert, she’s going to stay because of all that love.

Pat lay sprawling all over the chair as if she had dropped down off the ceiling. Her head was back, her face lifted and exposed. Eyes, lips trembled on the verge of opening. Alice expected her to wake, and smile. But Pat stayed asleep, vulnerable under Alice’s meticulous inspection of her. Alice continued to stand there, looking. She felt that she possessed Pat, in this look – her life, what she was and would be. Alice could never have allowed herself to sleep like that, open to anyone to come in and look at. It was careless, foolish, like walking about the streets with money held loose in a hand. Alice came closer and bent right down over Pat, to stare at that innocent face with its lightly-shuttered eyes behind which an inhabitant had gone off into that unknown country. Alice felt curious. What was she dreaming about, looking like a baby that has just napped off after a bottle? Alice began to feel protective, wanting Pat to wake up in case the others should come in and see her, defenceless. Then Alice thought, Well, it will probably be Bert, won’t it? Sleeping Beauty! Now it was scorn that she felt, because of Pat’s need. If she’s got to have it, she’s got to have it, said Alice judiciously to herself, making necessary allowances. And stepped lightly out of the sitting-room, through the hall, and into the outside world. It was about three o’clock on a fresh and lively spring afternoon. She took the bus to Electricity, with confidence.

Electricity was a large modern building, set well back from the main road where seethed, in cars and on foot, the lively polyglot needy people whose lives it supported with light, boiling kettles, energetic vacuum cleaners…power. The building looked conscious of its role: nearly a million people depended on it. It stood solid and dependable. Its windows flashed. The cars of its functionaries stood in biddable lines, gleaming.

Alice ran lightly up the steps and, knowing her way from having been in so many similar buildings, went straight to the first floor where she knew she was in the right place, because there was a room where ten or so people waited. Unpaid bills, new accounts, threats of disconnection: a patient little crowd of petitioners. From this room opened two doors, and Alice sat herself so as to be able to see into both rooms. As the doors opened to emit one customer, and admit another, Alice examined the faces of these new arbiters, sitting behind their respective desks. Women. One she knew, after a single glance, she must avoid. The letter-of-the-law, that woman, judged Alice, seeing a certain self-satisfaction in competence. A thin face and lips, neatly waved fair hair, a smile Alice had no intention of earning. But the other woman, yes, she would do, although at first glance…She was large, and her thick tight dress held her solid and secure, performing the function of a corset, but from this fortress of a dress emerged a large soft rather girlish face and large soft hands. Alice adjusted her seat, and in due course found herself sitting in front of this motherly lady who, Alice knew, several times a day stretched things a little because she was sorry for people.

Alice told her story, and described – knowing exactly what she was doing – the large solid house which inexplicably was going to be pulled down so that yet another nasty block of flats could be built. Then she produced her official-looking Council envelope, with the letter inside.

This official, Mrs Whitfield, only glanced at the letter, and said, ‘Yes, but the house is on the agenda, that’s all, it hasn’t been decided.’ She turned up a card in the cabinet beside her, and said, ‘No. 43? I know it. 43 and 45. I walk past them every day to the Underground. They make me feel sick.’ She looked, embarrassed, at Alice and even blushed.

‘We have already begun to clean 43 up. And the dustmen are coming tomorrow to take it all away.’

‘You want me to get the power switched on now before knowing what the Council decides?’

‘I’m sure it’s going to be all right,’ said Alice, smiling. She was sure. Mrs Whitfield saw this, felt it, and nodded.

‘Who is going to guarantee payment? Are you? Are you in work?’

‘No,’ said Alice, ‘not at the moment.’ She began to talk in a calm, serious way about the houses in Manchester, in Halifax, in Birmingham, which had been rescued, where electricity had flowed obediently through wires, after long abstinence. Mrs Whitfield listened, sitting solid in her chair, while her white large hand held a biro poised above a form: Yes. No.

She said, ‘If I order the power to be switched on, first I must have a guarantor.’

‘But do you know that it is only in this borough – well, one or two others. In Lampton, for instance, you’d have to supply electricity to us. If people demand it, then it must be supplied.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Whitfield mildly, ‘you seem to know the situation as well as I do! I do not make policy. I implement it. The policy in this borough is that there has to be a guarantor.’

But her eyes, large, soft and blue, were direct on Alice’s face and not combative or hostile, far from it; she seemed to be appealing for Alice to come up with something.

‘My father will guarantee payment,’ said Alice. ‘I am sure of that.’

Mrs Whitfield had already started to fill in the form. ‘Then that’s all right,’ she said. ‘His name? His address? His telephone number? And we have to have a deposit.’

Alice took out ten pounds and laid it on the desk. She knew it was not enough. Mrs Whitfield looked at it cautiously, and sighed. She did not look at Alice. A bad sign. She did not take the note. Then, she did raise her eyes to Alice’s face, and seemed startled at what she saw there.

‘How many of you are there?’ she asked in a hurried playing-for-time way, glancing at the note, and then making herself confront Alice’s face, that face which could not be denied. It was not fair! Mrs Whitfield seemed to be feeling. They were inappropriate and wrong, these emotions that Alice had brought into this orderly and sensible office. Probably, what Mrs Whitfield should be doing was simply to tell Alice to go away and come back better supplied with evidence of her status as a citizen. Mrs Whitfield could not do this. She could not. Alice saw from how that large smooth confined bosom heaved, from the soft flushed shocked face, that she – Alice – was on the point of getting her way.